


Friends with Benefits

by tunglo



Category: The Breakfast Club (1985)
Genre: 1980s, Coming In Pants, Coming of Age, High School, M/M, Moving On, Teen Angst, Teen Crush, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-08 21:05:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11654715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunglo/pseuds/tunglo
Summary: For all his genius, Brian can't take a hint.





	Friends with Benefits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [libraralien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/libraralien/gifts).



“We’re not friends,” Bender warns that first Monday when Brian attempts to fall into step beside him, not because he likes to see the hurt look on the kid’s face, but because it’s just the plain unadorned truth. One Saturday does not change the fabric of society. Brian is still a dork - a freakazoid of the highest order - and he still has a reputation to maintain.

End of conversation.

Allison gets it, obviously, and even Claire doesn’t drag things out any longer than necessary. She keeps him hanging on a leash for a week or two, like some stray she’s found in the street, then she gets bored of his not having any money, not having a Daddy he can ask for a few bucks to tide him over, and ditches him for some preppy idiot who doesn’t wear socks with his loafers.

Andrew nods at him occasionally, in the halls. Just a slight tilt of the head in acknowledgement, and Bender can handle that. One time they even exchange a few words in line at the cafeteria before going their separate ways, Andrew over to his knucklehead friends and he to a quiet corner where he can inhale enough nicotine to get through the next period.

He’s just getting comfortable, stamping his feet more firmly into the too big boots his old man is still insisting he’ll grow into, when a shadow falls right across his alcove.

“You know it’ll give you lung cancer,” Brian says, like he’s quoting from some public health pamphlet, “My Uncle David had lung cancer and the treatment made all his hair fall out and now he has to wear a wig when he goes out in public.”

Bender only makes a show of exhaling smoke.

“It’ll give me something to look forward to then, won’t it?”

For all his genius, Brian doesn’t get the hint. He glances about himself cautiously instead, then joins him in the alcove, so close that Bender can see the blue of his eyes and the long sweep of his eyelashes - totally wasted on a guy, that’s what his mother would say.

Would have said, anyway, before she upped and left with the man who came to fix their television set like the plot of a bad blue movie.

“You want one?” Brian asks and it takes a moment to register that he’s not offering up cigarettes but candy, because in Brian’s world that’s probably what counts as illicit contraband.

“No,” he sighs in return, snags a few anyway, then leaves Brian to it, flicking away the smoldering stub of his cigarette and trusting that the goody two shoes will tamp it out for him.

The problem is that Brian never seems to get the message. He switches seats in history class so they’re forced to sit next to each other - even Bender can’t bunk off every lesson until the end of semester - and tells him what he did on the weekends like Bender’s supposed to give a damn. In wood shop Brian tells their teacher that Bender’s offered to partner with him and it doesn’t matter how out of character it would be, how totally and utterly unlikely, the guy’s only concern is getting Brian out of his hair so naturally he rolls with the idea.

Brian is useless at it, even worse than he made out in detention, and in the end Bender loses his temper and makes Brian’s project himself, in exchange for Brian turning in his next three history assignments.

“We’re still not friends,” Bender reminds him when it’s done, unnerved by the unfettered happiness on the other boy’s face, and Brian at least tries to reign in the exuberance, expression approaching neutral as he says,

“So how do acquaintances say thank you?”

Not by getting themselves beat up in the boy’s bathroom after the bell has gone for fifth period, of that Bender’s pretty damn sure. He should ignore it, he knows. He should just walk on by and get to class, or else slip out of the school gates and go and loiter around the arcade until his old man has passed out for the evening.

He can’t though, some twisting ache in his gut won’t let him, so he backtracks to where Peter Markham is standing guard at the door, satisfaction flooding through him at the way Markham gives it up as a bad job and makes a run for it. Gregson doesn’t flee quite as easily, but anyone who’s beating on a kid half their size is a coward, and though Gregson puts up a token struggle he doesn’t hang around after Bender slams a fist to his jaw, and his nose, and into his abdomen a couple of times for good measure.

Brian gazes up at him from where he’s sprawled across the filthy floor, surrounded by his books and his carefully sharpened pencils, and there’s something about it that makes Bender’s gut twist all over again. It’s kind of soft, kind of heated, and though he extends a hand to haul Brian to his feet, he wipes it on the leg of his jeans afterwards and doesn’t hang around for more talk of friendship and gratitude.

It was a mistake, even so, because after that there’s no stopping him. Brian’s seeking him out in the mornings and careering clumsily down the steps at end of play to walk half a mile out of his way home with him. He’s inviting him to dinner at Chez Johnson, as though he wants to eat nutritionally balanced meals with the kind of people who’d drive their only son to contemplate suicide by flare gun, and he’s inviting himself into his personal space, turning up on his own doorstep and trying to sweet talk his scumbag of a father with “Yes, Mr Bender, Sir,” and “No, Mr Bender, Sir,” and “I’m John’s friend from school - I was wondering if he wanted to go to the movies, Sir.”

His dad attempts to beat the shit out of him when he gets home, for doing his best to live up to the family name, and for the first time he hits back because he’s not a fag, no matter what Brian seems to think. No matter how close Brian sits, and how much he stares, misplaced hope writ clear across his stupid face. He goes to school covered in bruises and when Brian reaches out to touch, like that’s ever going to be okay, Bender yells and shoves and demands that Brian go away.

Brian just slides back into his usual seat in history class the following morning and tells him that he’s sorry and that he understands.

“You don’t understand anything,” he hisses in return, ending up back in detention for his troubles, and he drums his fingers against the desk in front of him and refuses to acknowledge the part of him that wishes Brian were there to help alleviate the boredom.

People talk, of course, because eventually he chooses to take the path of least resistance. He lets Brian trail after him because it’s easier, and he lets Brian do his homework because if he graduates maybe he’ll find a job that pays enough to get him out of reach of his father’s fist. He still thumps anyone he catches at it, and he still thumps Brian on occasion because maybe he can’t help it, but this isn’t Bender’s scene and it never will be. He has girlfriends and women and casual hook-ups, and if it makes him feel strange when Brian looks too hard and too long, that’s just the same discomfort any guy would experience.

If he thinks about what it would be like, whether or not Brian’s braces would get in the way, that’s just what any guy would do when it’s put on offer. Brian would come in his pants, he thinks, undone just by the prospect of being allowed to put his hand - his mouth - on him. He’d flush up worse than any good girl. Would ramble nervously about technique, and breath mints, and his idiot cousin Kendall, until Bender hauled him in close and shoved his tongue in his mouth.

That’s how it happens one afternoon when they're sat in Brian's bedroom, with Brian's solar system mobile hanging from the ceiling and Brian's little sister practising the clarinet in the room next door. Brian gasps and shakes and trembles, and squeaks out an inarticulate warning about twelve seconds in, right before he makes a mess of his pressed white y-fronts. 

“You never tell anyone,” Bender warns, voice a low growl, and he doesn't whack one out the second he gets home, thinking about Brian's kiss swollen lips and the blotchy flush that worked its way under the neck of his sweater. 

It's a one time deal, it doesn't mean anything, at least not until it happens a second, a third, and a fourth time. Not until Brian's pressing a tentative hand between them, the angle off and the pressure all wrong, and Bender's coming anyway, because it's been a while and not because Brian is staring at him like this is his every wet dream turned reality.

“I lo-” Brian starts up one time even, cheeks rosy and sweat at his hairline, and Bender cuts him off with,

“I like getting my dick sucked. Why haven't you tried that yet?”

They never get that far, not that day because Brian's parents are due back any minute, and not in the weeks that follow because contrary to appearances he isn't really the type of guy to get off on forcing someone to do something they're not ready to. 

“I’m going tomorrow,” Brian announces eventually, the two of them freezing their asses out on a bench at the kiddy’s play park because Brian doesn’t look old enough to get in anywhere, and Bender has more sense than to invite anyone who looks like Brian back to any of his more populated hangouts. “We’re setting off at six to avoid the traffic.”

Bender doesn’t care, isn’t interested, and can’t understand why Brian is here instead of cramming in some last minute swotting before disappearing off to college.

“You could write to me,” Brian suggests, breath misting out in front of him. Bender snorts, cigarette smoke streaming.

“I could.”

He won’t, that goes without saying.

“This is my address,” Brian says all the same, and hands over a slip of paper from his pocket, name and address printed in his blocky handwriting. He puts it in his own pocket, just to be done with the thing, and they sit in silence for long minutes, staring out at the deserted play equipment.

“I’m going to miss you,” Brian says finally, quiet but sincere, and Bender pretends he hasn’t heard it.

The truth is that he’s going to miss Brian too.

**Author's Note:**

> As ever, feel free to chat / hit me with prompts over on Tumblr [@serenwib](http://serenwib.tumblr.com/) or Twitter [@falsteloj](https://twitter.com/falsteloj). :)


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